Taxpayers spent more than $4 million on Eric Holder’s travel costs

Alex Pappas

Alex Pappas is a Washington D.C.-based political reporter for The Daily Caller. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and the Mobile Press-Register. Pappas is a graduate of The University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., where he was editor-in-chief of The Sewanee Purple. While in college, he did internships at NBC's Meet the Press and the White House. He grew up in Mobile, Ala., where he graduated from St. Paul's Episcopal School. He and his wife live on Capitol Hill.

Taxpayers spent more than $4 million over the last four years on Attorney General Eric Holder’s travel costs, according to a new report.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, says it determined those figures detailing Holder’s travel costs from March of 2009 to August 2012 through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The group deemed $697,525.20 of those expenses as “taxpayer-funded personal travel expenses.”

Judicial Watch did not compare those figures to other attorneys general. But the president of the group blasted Holder, who uses government aircraft for security reasons.

“I hope these documents help Attorney General Holder understand the burden his unnecessary personal travel places on American taxpayers,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. ”The notion that federal officials such as Holder have access to a fleet of luxury jets for discounted personal travel for ‘security’ reasons should strike most Americans as a scam that needs to be reformed.”

The report details 213 trips outside Washington. The group classified 31 as personal trips, including “two trips to Martha’s Vineyard with a flight-only price tag of $95,184.50, as well as eight trips to Farmingdale, N.Y., at a flight cost of $118,553.71.”

Among trips listed by the group: Taxpayers spent $15,452.50 for Holder to give a speech at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in New York City.